Fight Path: Former Canadian paratrooper William Romero waited a year for Bellator slot

William Romero might have taken even longer to start his professional MMA career if several organizations hadn’t teamed for an open Canadian tryout.

That was a couple years ago, when about 300 guys met at an Ontario gym to work out and spar in front of scouts looking for new talent. Romero, though, might have been prepared more than any of them.

The 27-year-old resident of a town near Toronto had spent part of his childhood in Ecuador, started tae kwon do training at 9, and followed it up with work in judo before a three-year stint as an infantry soldier and paratrooper in the Canadian Forces. He had been a personal trainer when he finished his three-year military commitment and already fought in both the amateur MMA circuit and jiu-jitsu tournaments.

He had been thinking about a professional MMA career for three years, made all the more difficult because his native Ontario still outlaws the sport. Then he found himself at the tryout.

“It was one of the first times they had done such a thing, and none of us knew how it was going to work out,” Romero told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I had been training for so long, I didn’t know if it all was going to work in a professional fight.”

It has, and Romero will soon show those skills to a much wider audience. After starting his pro career 5-0, Romero now appears on Bellator Fighting Championships’ season-two featherweight tournament.

He’ll enter the competition with a young career but also with experience that was scrapped out of a single-mother home in a rough Canadian neighborhood. Now he wants to show that his extended amateur career built a better fighter.

“This is something I wanted to do last year, but I couldn’t break the contract I was in,” Romero said of the Bellator opportunity. “This time, it was a no-brainer.”

SWAT dreams to military reality

Romero was born in Ontario, but he and his two brothers were sent to live in his parents’ native Ecuador when his mother and father split up. From ages 2 until 6, Romero lived with relatives in the country while his mother stayed in Canada to set the foundation for a stable household.

It was Romero’s father, though, who took him to his first martial-arts class. He had been fascinated by martial-arts movies, but the desire for learning was also practical. It was a tough neighborhood in which they lived, and Romero was thinking about protection.

He wanted something with some contact, and he chose tae kwon do. While his father helped him get started, his mother provided discipline in the house.

“It was an old-fashioned belt kind of thing,” he said. “She wanted to make sure people knew she raised three men, even though she was on her own.”

Romero had thoughts of being a police officer, or more specifically a SWAT officer, before he graduated high school and enlisted in the Canadian Forces at age 17. He also qualified to be a paratrooper, considered an honor and special assignment.

“In 2001, we were stationed in Bosnia,” Romero said. “Our biggest task was patrolling our area of responsibility, making sweeps of the neighborhood, doing road blocks and checkpoints. We had to make sure everything was under control.”

When Romero finished his commitment, he decided to return near home and figure out his next step. Building on his experiences, he became a personal trainer and wound up at a gym with other employees who would help him start his path to MMA.

Longtime amateur, successful pro

It was July 2003 when Romero started his work and met Alin Halmagean, who operates Iron Tiger Muay Thai. Halmagean was a former national martial arts champion in Romania, and the two soon became friends.

“We just clicked, and I could tell I would work with him,” Romero said. “I watched a lot of UFC and PRIDE when I was in the military, and I loved it. I was excited to do some training.”

After about three months, Romero started his amateur career, mixed with MMA fights and jiu-jitsu competitions. Then came the fateful tryout.

With all of that behind him, he was clearly one of the competitors to watch, and he proved it throughout the three-session event.

“I felt confident that I had the skills, and I could tell they were watching me,” he said. “We had to do standup and boxing, ground work and then sparring.”

Romero impressed enough to get his chance, and in June 2008 he made his pro debut at an Iroquois MMA Championships show and won by TKO. In five fights in the Iroquois MMA Championships, XMMA and Ringside MMA, Romero has become one of Canada’s most promising fighters.

But, there’s been a catch. One of Romero’s biggest struggles has been living in Ontario, where, like several remaining pockets of the United States, putting on MMA shows is still not legal.

“It’s unfortunate because the sport is so big here in Canada,” he said. “There are so many athletes who can’t compete or perform in front of their families. We have to drive hours to participate. We have to hope the government will eventually allow it.”

But Romero soon will have his chance outside of Canada, and Bellator will host a worldly fighter looking for his next break.

“I’ve been competing for a long time, but I wanted the right professional opportunity,” Romero said. “I’ve tried to make the most of it.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features
writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the
circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter
with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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